Excellent Reads

UGLIES TRILOGY by Scott Westerfeld Simon & Schuster Childrens Books. (Ages 11 and up) Rating: 4.5 Stars UGLIES 448 pp. ISBN 9780857079138 PRETTIES 384 pp. ISBN 9780857079145 SPECIALS 400 pp. ISBN 9780857079152   The Uglies book series, intended for young adults, was actually recommended to me by my grandma. Now, although this might make you think, “boring”, and that this series must then be some weird old classic, I assure you it isn’t. Firstly, my grandma tends to pick good and modern books, and secondly she actually found out about this series from one of her high school students.   Something I like about all the books in this series is that the main character, Tally Youngblood, is very, very far from perfect. Most of the time I dislike or hate her, and if we had met we probably wouldn’t have become friends. For me, this means that when Tally does do something good, it feels much more real and impressive, because you understand how hard it is for her. This also...

GHOST KNIGHT By Cornelia Funk 352 pp. Orion Books. £6.99. (Ages 8 and up) ISBN 9781444008494 Rating: 5 Stars This story is about a boy called Jon who is 11 years old. When he goes to Salisbury’s boarding school, he finds out that the place is haunted with ghosts, so Jon gets a girl called Ella to find somebody to help. I like it because it has got ghosts and well illustrated pictures. It has got really good chapter names to hook the reader with action and magic. I think it could be more scary because the ghosts could be better. I think 6 to 12 year olds should read this book because 6 year olds like picture books and children over 12 might get bored of it. I give this book 5 out of 5 stars.

BEDEVILED: CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR Bedeviled Series: Book 3 by Shani Petroff Illustrated by J. David McKenney 240 pp. Grosset & Dunlap. $6.99. (Ages 10 and up) ISBN 9780448451138 Rating: 5 Stars    Angel try's to help a boy that she thinks needs help. but it ends up a disaster. Her friend now has her powers and she lost people she loves. She realizes that using her power isn't that easy. Even though her father already warned her. Now she has to deal with totally weird things and make them back to normal. Once again her father is correct, but he leaves her alone to make everything back to normal.    Have you ever felt heart broken? This is how Angel felt when she heard that her boyfriend likes her best friend. Gaby wished for something that might ruin her relationship with her best friend. And even after that she still wishes for more things. How can she stop?    I think the book has a connection with life. Like her friend Gaby breaki...

DIVERGENT Divergent Trilogy Book 1 By Veronica Roth 496 pp. Katherine Tegen Books. $17.99. (Ages 13 and up) ISBN 9780062024039 Rating: 5 Stars    This book is the best book I have ever read. It’s a teen novel about the future. It’s like all types of novels mixed together. It has love, adventure, friendship, science fiction and so much more. One of the other reasons I like this book is because it has so much information that you make an epic movie in your mind.    I like romance, but not any kind of romance. I like teen romance or a story about crushes. I don't like when the romance is so simple, like the 70's romance. This book has a very advanced type of romance, it has sharing secrets, crushes, the type of ‘aww’ caring and more.    Sacrifices are one of the worst parts of most books you may think, unless it has the enemy sacrifice themselves. Yes, I agree to. This book has too much sacrifice. Tris's mom, dad, and friends died in the book. It...

THE HORRIBLE HISTORIES: SAVAGE STONE AGE by Terry Deary Illustrated by Martin Brown 144 pp. Scholastic. £5.99. (Ages 8 and up) ISBN 9781407104287 Rating: 5 Stars     I enjoyed reading this book because it had good illustrations and it was very funny also I learned a lot from reading it. The topic of this book is the Stone Age peoples! And it tells you about their way of life. I liked the illustrations because they look like comic books strips. Also the people in the illustrations act in funny ways.     This book is written in a special way because most history books just give you the nice facts of history, but this book tells you all the horrible things in history. As a result, this book was scary and happy. So I guess that if you add up scary and happy at the same time that will make the book funny!     The most interesting fact in the book is that hunters used to keep mammoth brains as souvenirs to show off with the other...

THE UNLIKELY ADVENTURES OF MABEL JONES by Will Mabbitt Illustrated by Ross Collins 304 pp. Puffin. £6.99. (Ages 8 and up) ISBN 9780141355146 Rating: 5 Stars     This book is about a girl called Mabel Jones and she gets kidnapped by pirates. Then she becomes a pirate too and Mabel Jones has to help the crew find all the X’s so they can get through the map to the treasure, but along the way there are many ways to die.     My favorite character is Mabel Jones because she is a tomboy that is very clever and not scared of anything!     I think this book is special because most pirate books do not have time machines in them but this book does have them.     I like this book because of what happened when I started reading it. At the time I was reading a boring book and picked up this one instead to try it. This book was so good, it made me never want to stop reading it and I finished it in less than a day even ...

AMAZON SUMMER Amy Wild: Book 1 By Helen Skelton. 304 pp. Corgi Childrens. £6.99. (Ages 9 and up) ISBN 9780552568395 Rating: 5 Stars       This book starts off with the main character (Amy Wild) being invited to go on a trip to Peru with her Aunt Marg, to help her take photos of all the wildlife and city life. Her aunt is a photographer for magazines. When she arrives there she meets a man called Dudu and his son Juan who are also helping her aunt, and for a few days everything seems to be going well. Their good luck doesn’t last long, though, as after a few days Amy accidentally runs over her aunt with a truck. Terrified that Dudu will kill her, or she’ll be put in jail by the police, she runs away and hides in a boat she finds in the Amazon. The next morning she wakes to find herself deep in the Amazon with Juan purposely driving the boat. Not wanting to turn back, Juan decides to let Amy tag along with him. Sadly, he hasn’t taken her clumsiness into ac...

I AM THE ARCHITECT by Moon Illustrated by Rosanna Tasker 48 pp. Moon. £7.00. (Ages 6 and up) Rating: 5 Stars     This book is about Archie and his mom .In the story Archie decided to design his own house.     I like that in the book what’s funny is Archie used his mom’s M&S card to buy his items. Also I like the illustrations and how they are designed by the illustrator.     I think this book is special because it tells you what an architect is and also it has a competition!.     I like this book because it is very funny. I think the age you should be is 6-9 because it has hard words to understand. I will give this book 5 stars.

DEMON HEADMASTER by Gillian Cross 160 pp. OUP Oxford. £6.99. (Ages 9 and up) ISBN 9780192755827 Rating: 5 Stars      The story is about a girl and 2 boys and a very mean headmaster. When you look in his eyes he says "You are so so tired" and then you fall asleep. Except for the Splat group…      The most scary part was when the demon headmaster nearly killed Splat with learning children - but a noise interruption by Dinah stopped it. I like how there is always excitement in the chapters.      I enjoyed this book and I will give this book 5 stars. I think 8 – 11 year olds will like this book because it is not that scary at all like it has a many bits of scariness.

THE BATTLE FOR WONDLA WondLa trilogy book 3 by Tony DiTerlizzi 496 pp. Simon & Schuster $17.99. (Ages 10 and up) ISBN 9781416983149 Rating: 5 Stars     In most adventure books the main character is a boy and the girls are all quite weak, which disturbs me. However, in this book a girl (Eva Nine) is extremely brave, a hero and the main character. Eva Nine was created in a lab, which means that she isn’t a proper person so she’s supposed to be controlled by normal people, although she's still the one who saves Wondla. For these reasons she is my favorite character.     This book started with Eva Nine having gone into hiding with Hailey in the forest. They did this so they weren't captured by Loroc, who had already consumed his own sisters to make himself more powerful, and now hoped to consume his brother Zin also. Eva Nine had an idea for where Zin was hiding and got a trader in goods to take her there. When she got there she asked him for hel...

THE UNDERLAND CHRONICLES by Suzanne Collins Scholastic. £29.95. (Ages 8 and up) Rating: 5 Stars GREGOR THE OVERLANDER The Underland Chronicles Book 1 256 pp. ISBN 9781407137032 GREGOR AND THE PROPHECY OF BANE
 The Underland Chronicles Book 2 256 pp. ISBN 9781407137049 GREGOR AND THE CURSE OF THE WARMBLOODS
 The Underland Chronicles Book 3 288 pp. ISBN 9781407137056 GREGOR AND THE MARKS OF SECRET The Underland Chronicles Book 4 272 pp. ISBN 9781407137063 GREGOR AND THE CODE OF CLAW The Underland Chronicles Book 5 336 pp. ISBN 9781407137070     These amazing books just blew me away, for example, already by the first chapter, I got to thinking about how lucky I was because this book, unlike others, was about a family who had just enough money to live off of. An interesting aspect of the way the story was written was how the writer described humans through the perspective of human-like creatures in the Underland. In the book humans are described as Killers because they...

  ASTERIX AND THE PICTS by Jean-Yves Ferri Illustrated by Didier Conrad 48 pp. Orion Children's Books. £10.99. (Ages 10 and up) ISBN 9781444011678 Rating: 4.5 Stars              This story starts with Asterix and Obelix finding a Pict man stuck in ice. Quickly, they call all of the Gauls to help them free the Pict man.  Together they take the Pict man to Getafixi's hut.  Suddenly the Pict man pops out of the ice and starts to walk. The Pict man sees a tiny man with a stone tablet talking to him and also writing things down on his stone tablet.  As the Pict man can't speak he tells them his story in actions and carves the way to his land on one of Obelix's menhirs.  Then the Gauls decide to have Asterix and Obelix take him back to his land: the land of the Picts. While on the boat the Pict man gets his voice back and tells them his name is MacAroon.                If you didn't already know this book wasn't written by the same writer then you woul...

ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell 140 pp. Signet Classics. $8.99. (Ages 13 and up) ISBN 9780451526342 Rating: 5 Stars     This was a very strange but brilliant book. It really made me think about our world, as in how the government always try's to make a new start, create a better place, but making it work is hard. After a while, sometimes, bad people will take over and ruin it, making it just as bad as it started. Are all revolutions like that? This book made me think of the Hunger Games. They are both about revolutions where the new leaders end up being just as selfish as the old ones.     This book was about a farm where the animals were angry with humans for imprisoning them, treating them badly and then killing them when they grew up. Finally they chased out the farmers and put the pigs in charge (as they were the cleverest). Snowball and Napoleon were both leaders and disagreed with each other on everything. Snowball was actually the good ...

THE FATE IN THE BOX By Michelle Lovric. 352 pp. Orion Childrens. £10.99. (Ages 12 and up) ISBN 9781444003390 Rating: 5 Stars The Fate in the Box was different.  I mean, at first it seemed like a fact file about what Venice was like back in 1783.  Except it was kind of like Steampunk because they had machines that haven’t even been invented now, while still keeping everything else the same as it was back then.  However as I got deeper into the story it got so good that I couldn't stop reading it!  The main bad guy was Fogfinger and he did many bad things to the poor people of Venice.  I think the worst thing he did was kill the male Sea Saur, pretend the female Sea Saur had done it,  and invent the lambing (where two children, a boy and girl, were said to be eaten by the female Sea Saur).  The reason I think this is the worst thing he did is because it is awful when everyone thinks I did some bad thing I didn't do and it would probably be even worse if...

THE HUNGER GAMES TRILOGY by Suzanne Collins Scholastic. (Ages 12 and up). £7.99. Rating: 5 Stars THE HUNGER GAMES The Hunger Games Trilogy Book 1 464 pp. ISBN 9781407132082 CATCHING FIRE The Hunger Games Trilogy Book 2 480 pp. ISBN 9781407132099 MOCKINGJAY The Hunger Games Trilogy Book 3 464 pp. ISBN 9781407132105      I got this series as my tenth birthday present. I think this is a very good series and I really like the parts when she is actually in the arena where they have the Hunger Games in both book one and two. Even though it was a brilliant book I could say that Suzanne Collins should take out the boring parts, like when Katniss is in the cave with Peeta, because those parts are not really needed as part of the story. I can understand that to make the book more real you would have to have some grieving and death but I think that the author has gone a bit too far because it is not fun for the reader to be crying for most of each book in the series. ...

LOOK INTO MY EYES Ruby Redfort Book 1 by Lauren Child 432 pp. HarperCollins. £6.99. (Ages 9 and up) ISBN 9780007334070 Rating: 5 Stars      This book is especially interesting because it is all about codes, and Ruby Redfort (the main character) even makes up her own code which I am still trying to figure out! Really, besides this book being brilliant to read it is also really fun to stop reading for a bit, try to solve the code, then go back to reading and find out if you were right. I personally want to become a secret agent or spy when I grow up and wish that I had the chance to practice some of the amazing things Ruby Redfort does.      This book is about a very smart girl called Ruby Redfort who was asked by a secret agency to become their secret code cracker. She had to find out a secret that their old code cracker Lopez found out just before she died. At first Ruby had trouble with the code and didn't attempt to become an action agen...

NOAH'S ARK By Georgie Adams 
Illustrated by Anna C. Leplar 64 pp. Orion. £4.99. (Ages 4 and up) ISBN 9781444007893 Rating: 5 Stars The book is called Noahs Ark I like it because Noah listens to God. I will tell you about the story. Things have gone very wrong in the world he said to Noah I’m going to send the biggest flood ever. I will keep you family safe. When the flood is over I’ll start. I will tell you more about the story. so Noah got a girl and a boy firm each animals so he put the animals in the Ark. 5 out of 5 stars.

ARCTIC ADVENTURE By Willard Price. 272 pp. Red Fox. £7.99. (Ages 9 and up) ISBN 9780099482277 Rating: 5 Stars     I got this book from my school library when I was looking for a book to read. This is the second book I have ever read by this author. I really like this author's books because they make you want to save endangered species from becoming extinct. However, I do not agree that it is good for animals to all be in zoos because then animals don't learn how to live in the wild. I personally think this is a good book to read around this time of the year because I finished it yesterday, and as it just snowed it looks as if your in the Arctic today.     This book is about two brothers, Hal and Roger, who go to Greenland and Alaska to pick up animals that their father sells to zoos. While they were in Greenland they made very good friends with Olrik and a polar bear that they named Nanook. Nanook saved them when they were at the point of d...

THE GRIM GROTTO A Series of Unfortunate Events: Book the 11th. By Lemony Snicket. Illustrated by Brett Helquist. 352 pp. Egmont Books Ltd. £6.99. (Ages 9 and up) ISBN 9781405266161 Rating: 5 Stars     Even though this is "Book the Eleventh" you can still read it on its own because it explains the rest of the series in the beginning. That said, this book was very interesting to me because it revealed a lot of secrets. For example I was very surprised to find out that their friend Fiona's stepbrother had joined Count Olaf's troupe. I felt extremely sorry for Fiona that she had to be the one in the middle: the one both sides wanted.     This book is about the Baudelaires and their extremely unfortunate events underwater. I myself think that the most unfortunate and frightening event that they encounter is when Sunny is poisoned by the Medusiod Mycelium. Even though the events that occur after that are still very frightening, I hope I have not fri...

THE MYSTERIOUS BENEDICT SOCIETY By Trenton Lee Stewart 512 pp. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. $6.99. (Ages 9 and up) ISBN 9780316003957 Rating: 5 Stars       I am not sure if this book would appeal to everyone but it certainly appealed to me! I must say that when it says (behind the front cover) that this book is like Lemony Snicket’s books, the Harry Potter series and Roald Dahl’s books, it is definitely true.       Meanwhile I really like how the writer blends clues with adventure and fantasy. However this story isn’t exactly all fantasy. First of all it is true that most teachers are treated badly by parents if their children don’t get a perfect grade. Last of all TV does actually control your brain because of COMMERCIALS. Have you ever noticed that after seeing TV you run to the shop and buy something? Well if you have it’s because of commercials.       Anyways the actual story in t...